Abruzzi, when the people of Varese rallied

A year has passed since the night at the beginning of April that brought tears to the eyes of all of Italy. Varese, too, played its part, and the first to travel to the Abruzzi, that morning, were the firemen. The lead operating unit, those people called to dig amongst the rubble, but also to make buildings in danger of collapsing, and gas and electricity pipes, safe, set out from the fire station in Via Legnani. There were three vehicles and about a dozen men, who would immediately be joined by the logistics unit. The team head, Rosario Galizia, who arrived a week later to replace other men, explained, “We already have personnel available in the event of natural disasters,” who are ready to go as soon as the request comes for men and equipment. A few hours after the operating unit, the logistics unit also set out for the Abruzzi, seven men with a field kitchen and tents, to set up the first base camp, in the hamlet of Coppito. “We took turns of seven days,” Galizia continues. “The logistics unit stayed there until December 2009. The operating turns continued until a few weeks ago, for the stability checks and work on buildings and monuments.” After Coppito, the firemen from Varese set up a camp also in the hamlet of Assergi. “Towards the end, a team of five men would go down, including two from the “SAF” diving unit.” Now, there is only one official left in L’Aquila and its surrounds, checking the buildings.

In the days following the earthquake, the whole of Italy rallied to get to L’Aquila time to give a hand. Money was donated, by means of text messages, to help the people, and there were offers of materials. But there was also a need for help to organise the camps for the evacuees; like the help provided by the 3 disaster managers (Corinne Francese, Antonello Mazza and Maria Laura Zorzit), who coordinated the aid from Varese Province.

“We were among the first to go,” explained Rienzo Azzi, the councillor responsible for civil defence, “and we had the support of a mobile unit from Lombardy Region, to get to the “Montecchio 2” camp. The job of our volunteers was to set the camp up where those who had been left homeless had taken refuge, to put up tents and bathroom facilities, to give aid and assistance to those who had lost everything in the earthquake. On two occasions, we coordinated the camp that was managed by the provincial civil defence groups in rotation.”

The camp was closed on 31 October 2009, when the last 80 evacuees left.
But the earthquake was not the volunteers’ only priority. The provincial council have told us that they also ensured safety, at a time when the risk of forest fires was high, in the Abruzzi region. A Director of Extinguishing Operations (M. Claudia Burlotti) was sent, who, with the help of 12 volunteers from the Provincial Forest-Fire Squad, provided fire services, 24/7, for the whole of the month of August.

Apart from the work of the firemen and of the civil defence groups, the rescue machine was kept going by the thousands of offers from volunteers of rescue associations. Here, too, the work of dozens of volunteers from Varese was valuable, as they took turns, day and night, in the national operating room of the Italian Red Cross, which, from Legnano, coordinated the departures throughout Italy. In fact, in the first few hours following the earthquake, the first mobile unit in Lombardy Region left Legnano, at 3.30 pm, with over two hundred men and dozens of vehicles, ambulances and generators of the Firemen, the Civil Defence and the Red Cross, heading for the Abruzzi.